BOSTON _ Mike Trout has walked to the plate at Fenway Park more than 100 times since making his major league debut nine years ago. He's smacked singles and extra-base hits to left field, cranked a ground-rule double to right field and hit a baseball 110 mph only to see it turned into an out.
Trout is arguably the most accomplished hitter of his time. Entering Saturday, his career 1.000 on-base-plus-slugging percentage was the highest of any qualified player who has appeared in the major leagues since 2011.
Yet Fenway's quirky dimensions and idiosyncratic features had long denied him the pleasure of trotting around the bases after his own home run.
Until the sixth inning of the Angels' 12-4 skid-breaking win over the Red Sox on Saturday. He smashed a first-pitch heater thrown to him by Boston starter Rick Porcello. The ball carried and carried, and carried some more, until it cleared the top of the Green Monster in left field and came down somewhere beyond the billboards 428 feet away from home plate.
The home run was Trout's American League-leading 39th of the season, and the second by the Angels on an afternoon in which they bashed their way to their first win since July 30. Justin Upton collected four RBIs, including three with a first-inning homer. Eleven Angels batted in the seventh inning as they pummeled the Boston bullpen for seven runs.
Before Trout's prodigious two-run blast, the Angels clung to a 3-1 lead. They had done nothing since Upton's homer. Porcello had retired 14 in a row by the end of the fifth inning.
Throughout their eight-game skid, the Angels had not been able to couple good pitching with good hitting. They seemed destined to repeat that cycle after left-hander Andrew Heaney, making his first start since going on the injured list in mid-July, departed the game in the fourth. He had surrendered only one run in 4 2/3 innings outing but left runners on the corners for Taylor Cole.
Cole had given up nine runs over two outings before bouncing back with a scoreless inning of work Thursday. He continued to rebound, getting out of the jam and posting 1 2/3 scoreless innings Saturday. Adalberto Mejia allowed a run in the sixth, and JC Ramirez allowed two in the seventh. Neither performance altered the outcome.
With two more home runs, Trout will tie his career-high. If he continues this pace, he could handily win his first home run title _ the closest challenger to his lead is Kansas City's Jorge Soler, who hit his 33rd on Saturday in Detroit.
